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Securing Social Security for Migrant Workers: Orthodox Approaches or an Alternative (Regional/Political) Path for Southern Africa?

The socio-economic rights of migrant workers are extensively protected under various international treaties and other instruments, including the 1990 Convention on the Rights of All Migrants and their Families, various ILO instruments, and the General Comment on Social Security (2007) of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which elaborates the meaning of the right to welfare in Article 9 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Yet there is little to show for these pronouncements.

This article explores why this is so, with a focus on Southern Africa. The explanation for the lack of practical impact of international law, it is suggested, lies in politically entrenched concepts of rights of citizenship, and the powerful forces of global finance, trade and migratory labour. The first is shown to explain why non citizens are denied welfare when living and working in another country, and why even expatriate citizens from wealthy countries like Australia are denied portability of previously accrued rights when not living in their home country. The second is shown to explain why virtually no major receiving nor major sending countries for migratory labour have signed-on to the otherwise ‘exemplary’ protections of the Convention on the Rights of All Migrants and their Families.